COLONEL MACHAMER: Good afternoon and
welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center. We're glad
to have you here, I think, for a very important briefing
today, and we have some special guests with us for that.

First off, I would like to introduce, starting from the
left, Paula Dobriansky, who is the Under Secretary of
State for Global Affairs. And with her on the stage today
to talk about Human Rights in Iraq are, again, going from
left to right: Tanya Gilly, Zainab Al-Suwaij, Maha Alattar
and Esra Naama.

Ms. Dobriansky has an opening statement,
and then so will the ladies that are with us today. And
then we'll take your questions and answers. Thank you very
much.

Ma'am.

UNDER SECRETARY DOBRIANSKY: Okay. Thank
you. Well, good afternoon, and welcome to all of you. I'm
Paula Dobriansky, Under Secretary of State for Global
Affairs. I first want to thank the Foreign Press Center for
hosting today's event featuring Women for a Free Iraq, a
group which is dedicated to speaking openly about the
suffering of all Iraqi people under the brutal regime of
Saddam Hussein and also manifesting their fervent desire to
be free.

We have with us today: Tanya Gilly from Women
for a Free Iraq, who, along with her colleagues seated
here will make some remarks and then field your questions.
I can tell you that earlier today they had a very good and
productive meeting with National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz, and Ambassador at Large for a Free Iraq Zalmay
Khalilzad. And I'm pleased to share the stage with them this
afternoon. But before handing over the platform, if you
will, I would like to just say a few words.

We are
respectful of nations that differ from our own. At the same
time, we believe that democracy and human rights are not
just for some people but for all people. They are
universal principles that every man, woman and child is
entitled to. With International Women's Day two days from
now, we note in particular the struggle for women's rights
around the world.

For decades, Saddam Hussein has not
only terrorized his people, but he has impoverished an
entire nation. He has deprived the people of Iraq the
freedoms they richly deserve. He has employed rape as a
brutal means of torture. He has gassed his own people. He
is a threat to Iraq's neighbors and to world peace and
stability.

The State Department has issued a pamphlet,
Iraq, A Population Silenced, which documents these
egregious human rights abuses. The repression of freedoms
under Saddam Hussein cries out for a change. We want to
help Iraqis take back their country and build the
foundation for a better democratic society, a society
based on Iraqi traditions and culture, but one founded on
the universal principles of freedom and liberty.

We
are at a critical point in dealing with Saddam Hussein.
However this turns out, it is clear that the women of Iraq
have a critical role to play in the future revival of
their society. They bring skills and knowledge that will be
vital to restoring Iraq to its rightful place in the region
and in the world.

President Bush has stated that the
United States and our coalition stand ready to help the
citizens of a liberated Iraq. However, the United States
will not dictate what the future Iraqi Government will
look like. Those decisions are for the Iraqi people to
make. It is my sincere hope that the Iraqi people will
someday soon have a system of governance that respects human
rights, rule of law, and has transparent and stable
institutions; something that country lacks under Saddam
Hussein.

Thank you and let me now present Tanya
Gilly.

MS. GILLY: Thank you. First of all, I would like
to thank you all for this opportunity to speak on behalf
of Women for a Free Iraq. I will start off by reading our
statement. "We are women who fled from Iraq to escape
persecution by Saddam Hussein's regime. We have come
together to speak up about the suffering of the Iraqi
people under his regime and their yearning to be
liberated.

We come from every ethnic and religious
group[s] in Iraq. We have Arabs; we have Shias, Sunnis,
Kurds, Assyrians, Christian and even some who have Turkoman
blood in them. And we want to make sure that the voices of
Iraqis are heard as the world debates the issue of war in
Iraq.

Everyone in Iraq lives in fear. There is no
freedom of speech or religion. Torture, murder and ethnic
cleansing are tools used by the regime to stay in power.
These conditions cannot be denied. We have seen them
ourselves and we share our experiences with you in the
hope that you will help us to liberate the people of
Iraq.

We were honored to have the opportunity today to
share with Vice President Cheney, Congresswoman Price, Dr.
Condoleezza Rice, Dr. Wolfowitz, and Dr. Khalilzad the
message that we expressed to President Bush in a letter last
week.

This message offered our support to President Bush
for his principled leadership and explained the condition
of the people of Iraq. We also applauded the determination
of the American Government to disarm Saddam, and its
commitment to help liberate the people of Iraq.

Only the
United States and its allies can help the people of Iraq
break free from Saddam. Many Iraqi lives have been lost in
the past and many more will be lost in the future if
Saddam is not stopped. The cost of inaction and
appeasement would be very high for the people of America and
Iraq, alike; and even the Middle East.

We know from
personal experience that Saddam cannot be contained and will
always be a danger to the world. We also want to tell the
American people that Iraqis will help to liberate their
country. In 1991, they heeded America's call to rise up
against Saddam after the Gulf War. But without American
assistance, that uprising was crushed. Some of us here
today participated in that uprising, risking our lives and
losing relatives.

When the United States comes to our
assistance this time, the Iraqi people will not only be
grateful, we will join in. We look forward to the day when
the help of Americans and others of goodwill Iraq can take
its place as a free world nation, a nation that is founded
on the rule of law and equal rights for all citizens,
where women participate fully in society and their rights
respected and protected.

We ask the American
Government to remain committed to this process of creating
freedom and democracy for the Iraqi people and to ensure
that no neighboring powers interfere militarily with our
desire to live in a free, pluralistic, democratic, and
federal Iraq.

We have no doubt that the Iraqi people,
like all people, are capable of governing themselves in
this manner. We are grateful to all Americans who will be
asked to risk both life and treasure to remove Saddam. We
hope they know that the Iraqi people will eagerly
contribute everything they have to the task. Our prayers
are with the American people and with the Iraqi people".
--Women For A Free Iraq.

QUESTION: I'm Dr. Eden
Naby from the Assyrian Star. In a future Iraq, I wonder
how the situation of the ethnic minorities would be any
different than it has been in the past? Since 1977, the
Assyrians have been eliminated from the census in Iraq and
eliminated as an identity in the country. And after that, in
the Kurdish areas there has been an attempt to make the
Assyrians into Christian Kurds. Is there any assurance
that can be given to the Assyrian community and diaspora
that this policy will not continue?

MS. GILLY: I can go
ahead and answer that.

I think the Assyrian minority is
not the only minority that has suffered under Saddam's
regime. Again, I talk about the Shias, I talk about the
Kurds, I talk about the Turkoman alongside the Assyrians
who have lost their identity, who have not been able to
use their cultural rights and practice their religious
rights.

I think, definitely, and I believe in my heart
that once Saddam is gone, we have all suffered, and I
think we'll all join hands and try and build a better
Iraq.

QUESTION: I have a question, please. And I think
this issue was raised today for some other minorities.
This issue was raised today from other people, how about
minorities, because I'm from a small minority. How is going
to gel the new government, the new democracy in Iraq with
these minorities? And the answer was, we should, every
group from Iraqi people should have their own right and to
practice their religion, ethnicities, names, whatever they
want to do. And what we are looking for, we are looking to
have really this freedom that was absent in Iraq for long,
long years. Thank you.

QUESTION: I'm Amal Chmouny from
Al Anwar newspaper, Lebanon. I wonder, what is the, the
role of you as woman, as women in the future of Iraq -- the
real role in politics and local government? What will be
your role there?

MS. AL-SUWAIJ: We were hoping that our
role in Iraq will be the same as men role inside Iraq,
where we are strongly committed to our country and we would
like to have our people back there building a new civil
society, establishing courts, policies, and building
schools and hoping to have a free press and enjoy the
freedom and democracy in our country

QUESTION: As social
workers, not as political workers?

MS. GILLY: Actually
both.

MS. NAAMA: Actually both. We can also participate
in the parliament. Why not? I mean, we are half of their
society there, so --

MS. GILLY: More than half.
(Laughter.

MS. NAAMA: More than half. 65 percent of the
Iraq population is women. But if I can just add one little
thing. We actually have the example of Iraq/Kurdistan, the
Kurdish Experiment, where we have women parliamentarians, we
have women judges, women ministers, and we're hoping that
that would carry on into the rest of Iraq, also.

And
trust me and we're standing here and we're talking about all
our stories, and once Iraq has been freed, we're all going
to be screaming for our rights.

UNDER SECRETARY
DOBRIANSKY: Maybe should we -- I was going to say, should we
hear a bit, would like to share anything further, any of
you?

MS. GILLY: Sure. I think, I mean, in the end, it's
up to the Iraqi women what they want to do with what they
have. I don't think anybody can do it for them. So it's up
to us ladies sitting here, it's up to the Iraqi women, and
it's our duty here as women who have been able to have the
privilege of learning about through democracy that has
existed in Europe and the United States to take some of
that back and to show our women that they could do more
because Iraqi women are fairly educated. They are some the
most educated women in the Middle East.

Unfortunately,
because of the, of the brutality of the regime, they have
not been able to contribute to the goodness of Iraq. And I
think with the upcoming change, I hope that they will
contribute and I think, again, that's up to us to do. It's
-- nobody can do it for us. You have to step in and say,
we're going to do it this time.

MS. NAAMA: May I just
share a little experience? I guess you brought the role of
women and so on. Saddam, right now, is terrorizing women,
Iraqi women. He's using the excuse of infidelity. He's
using the excuse of women being unfaithful to their
husbands and the honor killing -- he's actually allowed
honor killing to come back into society, where something
that really, for a long time, was not in Iraqi society and
I'm sure these ladies here can correct me if I'm wrong.

But, once Saddam is gone, I believe that these are all
things that will disappear from our society again.

Women -- you have doctors that have been beheaded and
they've had their heads put on stakes and put there for
people to see. And they were accused of crimes of honor.
So once Saddam is gone, I really believe that this can go
away. And he's even used rape as a method of terror. You
know, when he tries to get people to talk or demands to
talk, he would bring their mothers, their sisters, their
wives and they would rape that woman in front of their --
you know, in front of the husband. I'm sorry. It's a bit
of a difficult subject to talk about.

And we have one
example of that in 1991 when the uprising happened against
Saddam Hussein's regime where Iraqi men and women stood
together to liberate Iraq at that time. And we helped as
much as we could. We carried weapons. We helped in the
hospitals.

We -- I can tell you about my personal
experience, that we, I went inside one of the jails in the
city that we liberated. We liberated 15 out of the 18
provinces inside Iraq. And we went inside the jail and we
opened the prison. The prison was full with not only men,
men and women and children, as well.

The prisoner[s]
were not only Iraqis but also, you know, people from various
different countries in the Middle East and Europe. And we --
they took us in a tour for -- to see the torture chambers.
And inside these torture chambers we saw the human meat
grinders. We saw chemical pools that they dissolve people
in. We saw rooms that's specially for sexual abuse.

Many
women, they enter these prisons inside Iraq when they were
15-14 years old. They left when they were -- many years
later, with three, four, five children because of the rape
that continues every single day inside these jails.

So
Iraqi men and women are waiting for the minute to be
liberated, to be -- to get rid of this brutal regime, and
to enjoy living in a free, democratic country.

COLONEL
MACHAMER: Okay. Up front.

MS. LANGLEY: On the issue of
women, in the northern part of Iraq there continues to be
the abduction of young girls who are not Muslim, who are
Christian, and there is no punishment for these. These cases
have been documented as late as 2000 and we have
documentation for them. There is no recourse for these
people. These are young girls, as young as 12, who are
abducted. It's something that has gone on historically but
continues today, and it should not in northern Iraq. And
I'm wondering what you know about this and what can be
done about it?

MS. GILLY: It's addressed to me? The
question on --

MS. LANGLEY: Anyone who knows about
Northern Iraq.

MS. GILLY: I actually don't have any
information on that and it really comes as a surprise to
me that you're talking about this.

MS. LANGLEY: We need
a website.

MS. GILLY: That's fine. I mean it's, yeah, it
would be good, because if something like this is
happening, obviously we'd like to stop it. But the
Christian minority, the Assyrians actually are members of
the Iraqi Kurdish parliament, as I know, and I think that,
you know, their role is very important in bringing freedom
to Iraq and bringing democracy. And we're hoping that by
having a federal system in Iraq all minorities' rights will
be protected regardless of what minority you are.

MS.
LANGLEY: I'd like to be able to give you this site and the
specific information of this practice that continues.

MS. GILLY: Sure.

COLONEL MACHAMER: Any more? Anyone
else? Yes. In the back.

QUESTION: Hi, my name is Julia
Sable. I'm from Radio Free Asia. In your discourse so far,
the transition from deposing Saddam Hussein to democracy
seems to be one easy step, and I'm just wondering, since you
know a lot more about Iraqi society, how easy is that
really going to be? I've heard a lot of skepticism in the
press that it's going to be able to happen quickly and
easily and that the society is actually fairly fractured
if you could just address that question. Thank you.

MS. ALATTAR: Well, Iraqis are waiting for the minute to be
free from Saddam. They have been suffering for more than
34 years now. And between torture and killing and
disappearing of people inside the country, the war is going
on inside the country for more than 30 years. And it's
about time to stop it. And Iraqis are waiting for the
minute that they have force supporting them inside their
country to get rid of Saddam.

In 1991 when the uprising
happened, we Iraqis rose up against the government,
against the regime. We liberated 15 of the 18 provinces
inside Iraq, but we needed help. Saddam came back,
gathered his troops, and killed all the -- most of the
people there. And so, as we have connections back in Iraq,
families back in Iraq, everybody is waiting for the minute
to be free.

MS. GILLY: I, too, would like to say that I
know that a lot of people assume that the Iraqi people
will not be able to handle democracy. I think we all heard
that before. And I don't think that's an acceptable thing to
believe because we're just as free-loving people, humans,
as anybody else here, in this country or in Europe. And we
are willing to work together amongst each other and also
with the United States to establish democracy. It's not
going to be easy. Nobody has said it's going to be
easy.

But we don't have any other option but to proceed
towards democracy. There is no other option. And there
have been many instances in the world where people have
started from scratch with democracy; Germany is one. Japan
is one.

The United States was very implemental in terms
of helping those countries in establishing democracy and I
hope the United States will do the same for us. We're
depending on the United States to help us move towards
democracy and establish a system where people can have
life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, as anybody else in
this country.

So I hope that people will believe in the
Iraqi people as a society. We have a long tradition and we
don't have a history of civil war amongst each other. I
don't see us fighting any time soon. We love each other, and
I think we'll do great with democracy.

MS. DARWEESH:
Can I respond also to that? My name is Tamara Darweesh and
I'm a proud Iraqi American, and my background actually
reflects the diversity in Iraq. I am half Kurdish and half
Arab, and my mother who is Arab also has quite a bit of
Turkish blood.

And I'm often faced with this question of
oh, Iraq is so fragmented, there's so many different
minorities. And I believe that that's to Iraq's strength and
I think that will strengthen the democracy in Iraq because
there are so many different voices. And as you see here
today, there are many different women here from different
backgrounds, different ethnicities, different religious
backgrounds. And we're here and we're working together.

And I think that, you know, that's really important because
I think there's a misconception, especially in Western
media, that just because we are not Western, we're not
necessarily Christian, that we are not able to handle
democracy and we're not entitled to it. And I think that
that's not only wrong, I think it's racist, and I think
that should be really confronted why that presumption is.
I think that we're eager for democracy -- we're willing to
work for it. No one's saying it's going to be an easy
transition. But I think that the time has come, and that
was something, which was very refreshing in speaking to
Vice President Dick Cheney, and Dr. Condoleezza Rice is that
they were irritated.

They emphasized that if there is
going to be military action in Iraq, that there will be a
change of regime and not just one from one dictator to
another, but actual change for democracy. And I think
that's what's needed at this time in Iraq. And I think
that's what the Iraqi people are desperate for. I've
nothing else to say.

MS. AL-SUWAIJ: The point here,
Iraqi people they are tired enough from war and from the
terrors that they have been living 30 years under Saddam
Hussein's regime. So Iraqi people, they are very eager
with all minorities, all ethnicities, all different
religions, they are very eager to build their countries.
And second, I want to say in Iraq, we have, we are the
origin of civilization of the world, and we have educated
people enough to build our countries, and we have high
technology that we have it, we own it, our own technology
that we have it in our country. So we can rule our country
and we can build democracy in our country. Thank you.

COLONEL MACHAMER: Anyone else?

QUESTION: Sawaki of Tokyo
Shimbun. I have a question to the lady in the middle. You
have been talking about the uprising, which happened in 1981
[1991]. But the uprising did not succeed. And it has been
said that the United States did not really help you, but
rather let the uprising suppressed by Saddam Hussein. How
did you feel about this fact at that time?

MS.
AL-SUWAIJ: Well, we felt very angry, and we felt that,
betrayal. And, but right now it's time for the American
Government to make good on their promise. It's about time
to restore this trust with the Iraqi people. The Iraqi
people still have a belief in American Government and
believe that America and its ally can help them to get rid
of Saddam and change the regime.

MS. NAAMA: May I just
add something to that?

My name is Esra, and my dad was a
former general in the Iraqi army, and we lived in the
south of Iraq and he was involved in the uprising against
Saddam after losing two of his brothers that were executed
for an unknown reason, and family members, and so on and
so forth.

And we lived through many hardships and people
in the south, I know we talk a lot about the people in the
north, but people in Iraq, in general, have lived in
hardships and I don t want to go into my story, but we, I
left Iraq when I was ten years old and we fled from one
city to the other and we saw people being hung on streets
and brutally killed in front of their family members' eyes
just because they were involved in the uprising and they
didn't have the opportunity to flee.

And I'm fortunate
enough to have the opportunity to flee, but we fled to a
neighboring country, Saudi Arabia, and we didn't make it in
time. The troops had already left, so we had to remain on
the Saudi border for three days without food and shelter
until a decision was made for us to be taken in Rafha
Camp. Rafha Camp was a camp that was, that brought us some
sort of safety but yet it also had very hardships.

And
we were granted asylum to the United States in 1992, and
we've been here since then, and we've lived the feeling of
democracy and freedom and just having rights that we
weren't able to have back home. So I think, I just want to
say, we haven't said, we want to thank President Bush and
the troops that are there in the desert. I'm, actually, I
live in San Diego and a lot of the troops left out of San
Diego, and we live very close to families of the Marines
that are going to fight for us. So I just want to say thank
you for helping my people and for going to liberate my
country. So, thank you.

COLONEL MACHAMER: Anyone
else?

MS. GILLY: I would like to say that the American
people will realize this is not just a war. This is an act
of liberation. This is an act of saving lives, maybe
millions of lives. And I hope they see it this way rather
than this is just a war of where bombs will be dropped.
This is a war where people's lives will be changed
tremendously and I think it's to the advantage of the
American Government to have a democratic Iraq, a free
Iraq. It's just -- it's one less tyrant, tyrant, tyrant,
that's in the world. The world will be free of one less
tyrant and it's, this is not only going to be good for the
Iraqi people. Of course, we love to see, you know, I love
to see my free, my Iraqi people, but I also like to see my
American people be free of the danger that this horrible
man poses.

And we all saw September 11. We don't want
another one of those. We want to have a free world, not
just a free Iraq, and I hope the American people will see
themselves as part of a big, large, global village. It's
not, this is not just -- we don't live, just -- everybody
lives in their corner anymore. We re all connected.

And, you liberate Iraq; you're also liberating your future
children. So I hope you see it that way.

QUESTION: I'm
Alicia Langley with the Washington File. I wonder if maybe
some of you could characterize for us a little more about
your meeting today with Dr. Rice and Vice President Cheney
and the others? Tell us about how long it lasted and what
comments, what questions you had for them and what comments
they had for you?

MS. GILLY: Our first meeting was with
Dr. Condoleezza Rice. The meeting actually lasted almost
an hour. We're a group of Iraqis, basically. We had a lot
of questions with regard to what securities, what security
guarantees do we have and, you know, and if Iraq is freed,
will they help us build a democratic Iraq?

MS. GILLY:
That's, this is one of the issue and also we talked about
the future of Iraq and how it's -- democracy is going to
be handled there and whether the several groups in Iraq,
several, the minorities and ethnicities in Iraq will take
share in the new government. Also, we met with Vice
President Dick Cheney afterwards and that meeting lasted
for about 20-25 minutes. And he listened to our concern.
He shared with us the United States Government thoughts
about the current regime inside Iraq and also he was
talking about the, you know, the American Government
concern about the Iraqi and the human rights violations in
Iraq.

And we as Iraqis had many different, several
questions about the humanitarian aid that's going to be
delivered to the Iraqis during the war or immediately
after the war and the transitional period from the war until
the country is stable. So this is most of the things that
we talked about.

MS. NAAMA: We also told him, each one
of us told him our story, our personal story, and they
were very responsive to that. They showed a lot of emotion
to it, which is something that we appreciated, both the
Vice President Dick Cheney and Dr. Rice. And they were
very responsive to our concerns in terms of what happens
after the war. They were very responsive to what happens
during the war, and they were, they answered all our
questions very appropriately. And I think it was a very,
very fruitful meeting.

COLONEL MACHAMER: Okay. That's
about all the time we have for this session. And on behalf
of the Foreign Press Center, I want to thank these
courageous women for coming here today to share their
experiences with us and with the foreign media. Thank you
very much and best of luck to you all.

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